A typical commercial or industrial building includes electrical power distribution systems that distribute power from one place to another within the building. In facilities having a substantial number of electrical systems, such as computing facilities, a large amount of electrical power is required to operate the facility. In addition, the electrical power is distributed to a large number of locations spread throughout the computer room (e.g., many racks spaced from one another, and many servers in each rack). A network of cabling, bus bars, power connectors, and power distribution units, may deliver the power to numerous specific components in the facility.
Commercial and industrial buildings often include components and systems to provide back-up power to electrical systems in the event of a failure of components or systems in a primary electrical power system. Providing full redundancy of electrical power may, however, be costly both in terms of capital costs (in that in may require a large number of expensive switchboard, UPSs, and PDUs, for example) and in terms of costs of operation and maintenance. In addition, some facilities do not provide redundant power for cooling systems.
While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof are shown by way of example in the drawings and will herein be described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit the invention to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.